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October 1864: The confederate ironclad Albemarle had sunk two federal warships and battered seven others, taking control of the Roanoke River and threatening the Union blockade. Twenty-one-year-old Navy lieutenant Will Cushing hatched a daring plan: to attack the fearsome warship with a few dozen men in two small wooden boats.

What followed, the close-range torpedoing of the Albemarle and Cushing’s harrowing two-day escape from rebel posses, is one of the most dramatic individual exploits in American military history.

This thrilling narrative biography, steeped in Civil War and naval history, brings to life a compelling and unheralded figure on the 150th anniversary of his greatest feat.

Theodore Roosevelt said “(Cushing) comes next to Farragut on the hero roll of American naval history,” but few have ever heard of him today. Tossed out of the Naval Academy for “buffoonery,” Cushing proved himself a prodigy in
behind-the-lines warfare.

October 1864: The confederate ironclad Albemarle had sunk two federal warships and battered seven others, taking control of the Roanoke River and threatening the Union blockade. Twenty-one-year-old Navy lieutenant Will Cushing hatched a daring plan: to attack the fearsome warship with a few dozen men in two small wooden boats.

What followed, the close-range torpedoing of the Albemarle and Cushing’s harrowing two-day escape from rebel posses, is one of the most dramatic individual exploits in American military history.

Theodore Roosevelt said “(Cushing) comes next to Farragut on the hero roll of American naval history,” but most have never heard of him today. Tossed out of the Naval Academy for “buffoonery,” Cushing proved himself a prodigy in
behind-the-lines warfare.

This thrilling narrative biography, steeped in Civil War and naval history, brings to life a compelling and unheralded figure on the 150th anniversary of his greatest feat.